Chehaw Council

Okefenokee Swamp

 Patches

 

Officially Assigned a CP designation

by Arapaho

 

Top CP 102 (58mm x 82 mm) Dark Sky

Middle CP 102 (58mm x 82 mm)

Bottom CP 103 (80mm x 97 mm)

 

             

The launch point for the scouts was the Stephen C. Foster State Park.  The Georgia Park Service had a small rectangular patch for each of its state parks.  At right is the one for Stephen C. Foster.  Various state park patches were worn under the round top patch in a line.  

 

Chehaw Council has a long history of Okefenokee Swamp camping beginning in the 1940s. Click on 1943 Chehaw Okefenokee for more information on the slide shown to the right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since at least 1969 Chehaw Council went to the Okefenokee Swamp for a spring camporee every year.  In 1969 the council took two 'expeditions' to the swamp:  the first on March 6-8 and the second on March 13-15. The State Park Service allowed the scouts to camp in the swamp on Billy's Island.  In the early 70s the entire council went at once; however, after a few years the state determined that that many boys at one time was not good for the eco-system of Billy's Island and toward the middle of the 70s only one troop at a time could camp on Billy's Island.  Each boy got one of the above patches for each trip. 

Billy's Island was the site of a lumber town that housed the workers who clear cut the swamp in the early 1900s. At one time, there was a population of 600 people on Billy's Island.  The settlement included a theater and railroad turnaround (the railroad entered from the west)..  By the 1970s only a  cemetery and rusting metal remained of the community.